EP 01: Exploring the Psychology of Habit: From Cue to Reward

Summary

In this workshop-like podcast, Laurie Groh discusses the power of tiny habits and how they impact our lives. She explains that habits are automatic systems that allow us to perform tasks without conscious thought. Laurie explores the science of habits and the habit loop, which consists of a cue, craving, response, and reward. She emphasizes the importance of becoming aware of our habit loops and offers strategies to disrupt them. Laurie also suggests eliminating unnecessary decisions to conserve mental energy. Finally, she provides alternative exchanges for coffee and encourages listeners to create better habits.

Takeaways

• Habits are automatic systems that allow us to perform tasks without conscious thought.
• Becoming aware of our habit loops is crucial for creating positive change.
• Eliminating unnecessary decisions can conserve mental energy.
• Alternative exchanges for coffee include tea, cold showers, and exercise.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Habits

01:09 Understanding the Science of Habits

09:46 Eliminating Unnecessary Decisions

10:15 The Habit Loop

13:59 Disrupting the Cue

15:40 Disrupting the Craving

18:59 Disrupting the Response

19:28 Disrupting the Reward

22:55 Alternative Exchanges for Coffee

23:24 Conclusion and Action Steps

This episode is brought to you by:

Shoreside Therapies: 

Book a free 15-minute consultation online and get into therapy within a week!

MICHAEL PHELPS cold tub:

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Laurie's Top 5 Recommended Books on Habits:

1. ⁠The Power of Habit⁠
2. ⁠Atomic Habits⁠
3. The One Thing ($1.79 for a limited time)
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
5. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything (Free with Kindle Unlimited)

Transcript

Laurie Groh (00:03.484)

My name's Laurie Groh, and I'm the owner of Vital Minds and co-owner of Shore Site Therapies. And welcome to our webinar on the power of tiny habits. I really am excited today to talk about habits because, in all honesty, it's legitimately one of my favorite topics to talk about. There isn't anything.

That I wouldn't try to learn regarding topics. This is one of the topics that I love to talk about most. The reason is that I feel like it goes into almost every single part of our lives when we talk about habits. So, today, I'm going to share this with you all.

And we're going to go through the power of tiny habits.

Laurie Groh (01:09.638)

Understanding the Science of Habits. All right, so this is basically the introduction to habits and how we really find how habits work and how they affect us. And what I want you to really pay attention to here is that habits are tools and are something that we have learned how to have.

Since we were very little. Habits are basically, in a nutshell, the way that we learn. It is an automatic system that takes over so that we don't have to think. So anytime that you are doing something throughout the day where you don't have to think, and you're doing it anyways, that's a habit. And if you're brushing your teeth, that's a habit. If you're driving,

That's pretty much a habit besides, okay, I gotta pay attention to where I'm going. But with all of the stuff related to driving, you don't have to think about it very much. Let's see, what else? We could talk about riding a bike, which is also a habit. Walking, technically, is a habit because we have learned that it gives us a lot of rewards. And we do it automatically.

Laurie Groh (02:39.622)

So, habits are behaviors that we do repeatedly. It's often without conscious thought, from brushing our teeth in the morning to driving our car to work. Our brains are essentially wired to seek out patterns and routines. The reason is that it would make our life so much easier if this did not occur.

We wouldn't be able to drive and eat a Big Mac at the same time. We wouldn't be able to walk and listen to an audiobook at the same time. We wouldn't be able to scroll through TikTok videos and listen at the same time. Well, okay, we can't that we actually cannot do. Um, but I'd be very interested if, at some point, we're able to do that. Most of the time, you can't do a habit. That's the same, uh, sensory.

So you can't listen to two books at the same time. You can't talk on the phone and listen to your adorable, wonderful child or husband and talk on the phone at the same time. You can't do that. So our habits have to be, again, completely automatic without us needing to interpret or to think.

So, one thing I will point out is speed reading. If you're ever interested in learning how to speed read, that actually somewhat uses a, I mean, it is a habit. It's using a different habit and creating a different habit for reading. But it's interesting because it takes away some of the things that we do when we're reading.

That is habit-based. So, for instance, reading in our brains, reading in our minds while we are...

Laurie Groh (04:45.094)

So, reading, let me say this again.

Laurie Groh (04:51.192)

One side note, and you will notice I love side notes, and I will go off on tangents, and that is my prerogative. Is that how you use that?

Laurie Groh (05:04.55)

One of the things about

Reading is actually about the habit. So we seek out those patterns of reading, and we tend to say the words in our minds. So, for speed reading, we have to train ourselves to not be in the habit of saying the words in our minds as we're reading. You actually have to practice not doing it, and that's how we can take in information faster.

I'm so fascinated by it. I'm not able to speed read yet but speaking of habits, maybe that's a habit I will start to go towards.

Laurie Groh (05:53.414)

By creating automatic responses, we can serve mental energy and habits follow. So if we create an automatic response, it's sort of like creating a, like if we're using a computer program, for instance, and you're typing in something, any time you would type in that code, a response happens.

So that's what makes things move quicker and faster because that process becomes automatic. One of the things that I want you to just pause on is thinking about everything that we do in our lives. Let's just pick one day. I want you to think about all of the decisions that you end up making in your day.

And I want you to think about if there's a way that you can make fewer decisions.

One of the things when we are talking about habits is that a lot of us feel like we don't have the energy to do anything new. We barely have the energy to move through our lives.

The one thing that we can do if you don't necessarily want to have any other habits is to look at what you currently do and see if there are some things that you might spend a lot of energy on that are not necessary.

Laurie Groh (07:33.03)

So that the habits start flowing from things you're already doing. A great example would be Steve Jobs. He, he, right? He wore the same black turtleneck jeans and sneakers. And he did so so that he wouldn't have to make those decisions every day. If we limit the decisions that we make every day, that becomes an automatic process.

I wake up, I brush my teeth, have coffee, whatever those things are that you don't really even have to think about. You can add that I'm going to put on my black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. Right? Right there. You have three fewer decisions you need to make, which conserves energy. So I am not suggesting that you wear that outfit, although it...

Actually, it's probably coming back around with, with, I don't know, I don't know. You could, you could do that. That would be, that would be fine and great. Um, but you know, the real thing I want you to do here is to pay attention to things you can eliminate, thereby making your life a bit more automatic in the things that don't concern you as much. Do you need to make a decision about...

Which toothbrush to use in the morning. No, because it's there. If you live in my house, then I think that is what goes on because my son steals my toothbrush all the time. But for the majority of people, they're not just saying, I'm going to use this toothbrush. They're going to use the same one. They're not going to have to think about it.

Laurie Groh (09:22.758)

Alright, here's your action item. Again, write down those activities and those daily decisions that you make, and see if you can eliminate a decision.

Laurie Groh (09:37.862)

Okay, that's your big homework.

Laurie Groh (09:46.31)

All right, next, I'm going to talk to you about a habit loop. And this goes back into the automatic thought process that we have. A habit loop, and you can read literally any book on habits and get this information if you'd like. I have a few recommendations I can give you at the end. However, what I want you to pay attention to is these four steps.

Response. Now, most people just talk about the three steps, but I really think it's important to have the four have it in fours. You have the cue. So, what's a cue?

A cue is something that's activating us. It could be; people would maybe say it's a trigger. You could say, what's the situation that activated you in this situation right? Like there's something that says, huh? Here we go. And then, after that, we have the craving.

The craving is a desire. I want you to really think about our typical desires that we have and try to tell yourself, don't desire that, right?

Almost impossible. It's, you can, you can, it's not gonna feel good to say, I'm not gonna move towards that desire. I shouldn't say it's almost impossible. People have some self-control when it comes to desires and cravings and all of that. But all in all, the reality is that it's really challenging. So don't, please, please, please do not be hard on yourself if this portion,

Laurie Groh (11:46.402)

Difficult. It's meant to be difficult because that is the whole process of being human.

Then we go into the response. So I have a cue, something that says, hey, here's something, and that activates my craving. And then I respond to that craving, and then I get the reward.

So, using myself as an example, I wake up tired. That's my cue. Wake up. My son has to get up super early now. Not a fan. I went from getting over eight hours a day to not getting quite that amount.

So this is actually a pretty good topic because I'll have to work on my... I'm gonna have to work on that habit for sure, what I'm doing there. But the cue is waking up tired. Then, I have the craving, which is a desire to feel awake.

I want to be... my truest desire is to go back to bed. But I'm going to be awake because I need to be awake for my son and for everything else going on. But that desire to feel awake kind of signals to me that my response should be, Cotty, that's gonna get me there. I'm gonna feel alert. I'm gonna feel awake. I'm gonna feel focused.

Laurie Groh (13:25.09)

That's my reward. So, sure enough, every single day, I'm going to continue to do that, right? That's the habit loop. When we are looking at that habit loop, I want you to; this is going to be the first major thing that I want you to do. This part is all about becoming more and more aware of our habit loops. So,

Imagine we disrupt that cue.

We wake up tired. If we disrupt that cue, what would that mean? That would mean we would actually get enough sleep.

Laurie Groh (14:11.394)

That would be amazing. Let's get some more sleep. Then we get rid of that cue. However, if the cue is the smell of coffee, getting enough sleep isn't really gonna stop that cue because the new cue would be the smell of coffee. And so that's where we have to kind of pay attention to what's actually.

What's the thing that's actually our cue? Do we have multiple cues? That's very possible. If I wake up tired and I smell coffee, I'm a hundred percent having coffee. If I wake up tired, I might immediately run to get coffee. I might let the dog out first. I might, you know, do some other things. Most likely though, to be honest, I'm going to get that coffee as soon as humanly possible.

Knowing your cue means you know you can potentially disrupt there. Next is the craving, right? The desire to feel alert. So, we can disrupt that craving by being centered and mindful and letting it pass. Here's the craving. Where am I noticing it?

My whole face, maybe my glands, and I'm salivating for the... Sorry, it could be my... I could be salivating for the coffee. Maybe I might be salivating right now for the coffee. And...

Then you let it pass. Typically, that lasts about five minutes for most people, but the reality is it can last all day long, depending on. For instance, if you're tired all day long and that's your cue to drink coffee, guess what? You're going to have that cue again and again. So that's why sometimes people need that 2 p .m. cup of coffee.

Laurie Groh (16:29.28)

Let me be clear: there are a lot of reasons you might need that 2 p .m. cup of coffee.

But that is one thing just to notice: if the cue is being tired and that's the craving, then that's the action that's going to continue at that point as well. So that's a great way to disrupt the craving. More power to you if that works for you. I think that's great. I think the more that you can do that,

better because you're not. You're just noticing the craving, but you're not moving towards getting rid of the craving or, um, satiating the craving. The other thing we can do is distract. I think distraction can be wonderful, and I think we need to use it when we can.

Distraction is not the solution to everything. So, distract yourself when you are feeling some intense emotions or something you need to do. Eh, not maybe as great of a technique. However, sometimes distraction is necessary so that you aren't in that feeling all day long. So it's not a negative thing. It's just figuring out how you can use it to your benefit. So distracting yourself.

Let's use one of the most effective forms of distraction. Let's say it's our phone. So let's say we wake up, we're tired. We did not disrupt the tired queue. We are tired. We're at the craving now, and I'm going to distract myself because I'm not going to have my coffee. I'm going to distract myself, and I'm going to be on my phone. That actually might work. It's not.

Laurie Groh (18:28.888)

Best because now you might be just going to be on your phone for like eight hours. I don't know, but you can use a distraction technique to disrupt that craving. The next one you could do would be self-talk. So that could be encouragement. It could be saying something like, I know this is hard, but you're going to get through this. You've got this. Any of those positive self-talk.

Statements that we could use, we could challenge ourselves like you're not gonna die from not having coffee. It feels like it, but you're not going to. That could help. Last, then, would be the coffee. So you can disrupt it by exchanging it with something else. You could use another drug. I can't recommend that.

Laurie Groh (19:28.312)

Can't recommend that. You can't. Don't do that. Don't do that. But, you know, you could have a Diet Coke. Again, that's not great, but you could do that for a while, and that could make it a bit easier because it's not going to have the same amount of caffeine, but it will, um...

You know, you could use it as a way to wean yourself off depending on how much coffee you're drinking because there is a legitimate rebound and withdrawals from coffee. You could exchange it with a run. I'm not doing that, not at 5.45 in the morning. However, a run would be actually pretty...

Pretty solid exchange because it would.

It really would give you a reward of feeling alert, right? It would do that. What it might not do might be too much friction. It might be too hard to do that in the morning. However, if you run anyways,

you could just kind of go into that because then it is; it would make sense to do that. Like, okay, I normally have my coffee then run, but actually, I'm going to just go to the run and feel all the good feelings after a run. Next, you might be hearing about this quite often, like a cold plunge or an ice bath of some sort. And you know, there are obviously there's,

Laurie Groh (21:19.84)

A lot to be studied on this, but there is a lot of information coming out now on how it could be really useful for ADHD, how it could be useful for depression, and how we get a lot of positive dopamine and a lot of positive chemicals released in our body when we do a cold plunge. I'm not going to get into that right now. However,

that could be something you could exchange it for. Now, that to me would not be... That, to me, would also not be great. I might even run first. I mean, it depends. I'm gonna probably try to do the cold plunge just to see what all the fuss is about. You could do what Mal Rabbins talks about, I think, in one of her books.

Putting your arm in cold water in the shower also helps to make you alert. So that wakes you up. That helps. That could be an easy alternative. Right. Another thing you could do is exchange it for, I said, diet Coke, right? A little bit less caffeine, but most people, if they're going to look for something healthier that they're going to exchange it for, you want it to be a little bit similar. Maybe it would be tea.

Matcha is what people exchange it for a lot of times, and that's how you disrupt it.

So I'm going to leave you here today with that assignment to write down all of those things, all those habits that you have right now. Write them down. Use them. Use that as information to get to know yourself better. Use that so that you can start.

Laurie Groh (23:23.906)

To create better habits. And we are gonna have another portion to this. And I look forward to talking to you then. Take care, and have a great day.